Younhee Paik: Listening for a Thousand Bells

Almost 30 years since Paik’s inclusion in the inaugural Korean pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1995, her work has been selected for the American pavilion’s exhibition at the 2024 Gwangju Biennial, making this a moment ripe for reviewing this seminal Korean-American artist’s oeuvre. The artist’s surreal, often abstract paintings combine symbolism, celestial imagery, and strong feminist undertones. Paik’s work tells the story of her life, touching on themes of immigration, motherhood, spirituality, and the artist’s connection to nature. The exhibition features a selection of works ranging from 1992 to 2023, serving as a small-scale overview of Paik’s illustrious practice. The artist’s vivid imagination shines throughout her many decades of work, shedding light on the unseen and giving shape to the intangible and ethereal aspects of existence, all from the lens of her lived experience as an Asian-American woman. Listening for a Thousand Bells celebrates Paik’s expansive practice while introducing new audiences to her work in the Bay Area and beyond. The exhibition serves as an incomplete testament to Paik’s ongoing legacy within modern and contemporary art history and a touchpoint for cementing her position within the canon. As part of the gallery’s ongoing programmatic focus on contemporary Asian artists, we are proud to foreground Paik as a seminal fixture of the Bay Area and Korean-American arts communities with Listening for a Thousand Bells.